blow the house down
by Mira-Jade
Summary: That thin line becomes as tiny as the horizon an untouchable distance away as time wears on . . . A tale of corruption in six parts. Molly/Moriarty
1. in which one takes a first step

**"blow the house down"**

**Genre**: Drama, General  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG  
><strong>Time Frame<strong>: Posy-TGG, AU  
><strong>Characters<strong>: Molly/Moriarty

**Summary**: That thin _thin _line becomes as tiny as the horizon an untouchable distance away as time wears on . . . A tale of corruption in six parts.

**Notes**: This is set in my M&M verse, which is preceded by "he kindly stopped for me", "Victor, Meet Spoils", "glass shatters softly", and "knots in this noose of mine".

As always, thanks for reading, and enjoy.

**Disclaimer**: Nothing is mine, but for the words.

* * *

><p><em>"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all."<em>  
>~ Hamlet, III.i.83.<p>

* * *

><p><strong>i. "in which one takes a first step from the sidelines"<strong>

The first time Molly Hooper accompanied Jim Moriarty to a _meeting_, she readied herself not knowing quite what to expect.

There was something heavy in the back of her throat (which most certainly was not nervousness. Nope. No siree), as she attempted to make herself presentable – twining her hair up into a severe bun, and slipping into a rather expensive dress-suit, one that had not been her decision to purchase – _at all_, with a grimace. While a far cry from her usual taste, the squared shoulders and deep shade of the fabric looked good on her - the small pinstripes accented the shape of her while looking decidedly no-nonsense enough to pass for her role of the evening.

She shaded her eyes dark, and her gaze looked black and pointed when she was done (even as she ruined the femme fatale look she was going for by singing into her abused hairbrush - because no primping session was complete without such things). The woman in the mirror looked confidant when she was done. Poised. And maybe, just maybe, even the slightest bit dangerous.

It was that final observation that she carried with her and kindled like an ember into flame – keeping her eyes high and haughty(observant) as the meeting carried on. Jim and a number of suited men (all with hard eyes and smirking lips, and good _Lord_, but all of her times watching the _Godfather _could not prepare her for real villains no matter what she had thought), gathered at a large round table (all puns aside) and talked in double tones about business. Their business.

She had heard bits and pieces of these gatherings from Jim before – enough to ignite her curiosity, making it so that when he invited her deeper into his world, she couldn't help but say yes. Here, the high circles of the underworld, like dark Hades himself calling together his court, gathered together to take count of the very shadows themselves. And while she easily tiptoed the fine line between Jim's world and her own, this was to dip her toes in the water, so to speak. Here, she was a white spot amongst a black stain, and it was only a matter of time before the stain spread.

Still, questions of conscience and doubt aside, she did not fear anything from the seedy men gathered by the dozens - none who even looked particularly so – there was no oily hair or canine grins, no slickly clichéd mobsters. Instead there were a handful of men and their aides – even foreign 'dignitaries' who looked like one of the average people she could have passed on the street on any given day. It was that appearance, she reflected later, that was truly dangerous. And yet . . . not to her. Not anymore.

After all, how did one fear a fly when one enjoyed the web of a spider?

As she watched, if became apparent to her that Moriarty was less the conductor of an elaborately tuned and arranged orchestra so much as he was the silent puppeteer for a blind audience. He was the ghost writer, beneficiary and mastermind, behind everything from petty theft to the more elaborate accidents. It was to him that the seedy underworld – Napoleon's own ring of crime - swore their allegiance to, one by one.

It was a tapestry of movement – cloaks and daggers and charming smiles and double crosses playing over and over again; more real than her mystery novels, and more real than even her own profession. With her job in the mortuary, saw the rippled aftershocks of the atrocities of these men. Now, she was standing at the beginning of the ripple, right next to the stone who started the distortions.

. . . a part of her thrilled at the danger of it, at the subterfuge. And another part of her was good at it. She slipped into her role like a prima donna slipped into her song on stage. She was not Molly Hooper, scared little mouse of a pathologist. She was -

"Molly Moran," she introduced herself when one of the leading gentleman (a kingpin of a figure from Dublin) asked her her name at the end of the proceedings. Jim had stepped aside, his eyes dark as he nodded subtly, curious to see what she would do.

When she shook the man's hand she did not think that this was a hand that had spilled the blood of many, she only concentrated on keeping her grip steady and her eyes hard.

The sound of the new name on her tongue was a hidden fountain of strength in the deep parts of her. Soon, she would not wear this persona – it would wear her, and she looked forward to the distinction in the make-up of her being.

When they left, night fading and morning almost upon them, Molly Moran faded away, and Molly Hooper came back in slow waves. Spring was in the air as they walked, but the clinging night was still chill – the whispers of cold on her skin assisted her by cooling the warm flare of excitement and confidence that was growing in the center of her, like the hydrogen fires that fed the core of a star.

She was chatting about this and that as they walked – letting loose her impressions and her thoughts from the evening. While she did not have the insights that Jim would have gleaned, he had once told her that he thought better when she was speaking – she was a reflection and magnifying glass both to him, allowing his thoughts and plans to come to fruition through the vessel of her.

"I'm normally pretty good at getting inside of people's heads," she said simply, straight faced when he said as much – letting go of his hand long enough to mime a sawing motion. Her hand tingled with memory at the movement – like she had a corpse before her at that moment, all ready to spill its dead secrets.

Jim did something surprising then. He laughed at her joke.

Molly actually stopped and stared for him for almost a full five seconds as he laughed (she counted, _tick, tock, tick, tock_, in her mind – waiting for the laughter to turn mocking). But he was genuinely amused. Pleasantly surprised, even. Billy, her last _'friend who could maybe quite possibly want to get a drink with her'_, and Anthony her _'neighbor who smiled and held the door for her every once in a while'_ had not been amused by that same joke – actually, the latter had gone a little green before hesitantly asking her if she enjoyed her job _that _much.

It was enough to make a girl wonder about herself at times - enought to make her wish that she could get inside of her own mind and see if all of the pieces were there – stick her fingers into soft organic matter and read the secrets of herself. Perhaps, that unspoken frustration was why she found herself strangely calm in _his_ presence – he could read the whole of her from her eyes alone, and that _knowing _that she found in return bound the whole of her to herself.

And then, there were soft moments like this one - where she will swing their hands together as they walk, skipping between the cobblestones (careful not to walk on the cracks in respect of childhood rhymes). In these moments, she could feel a new part of her blooming, and she did more than accept the strange matter of her makeup. She welcomed it – even saw something worthy in it.

"You were an asset to me tonight," Moriarty said simply as they neared closer to her flat. He didn't say that he was proud, he didn't say that she did well. He said that she aided him; that she was a useful and functioning piece in the larger stream of things. She was a prized piece on the center of the chess board – not just a lost checker waiting on the sidelines of the game.

And in return, Molly hid a tiny smile at the barest wisp of praise, the lamplight above them falling over her in a pattern that made her want to hold herself just that much taller.


	2. in which there are tools to trade

**ii. in which there are tools to trade**

"You know what – I really don't think that this is the best of ideas."

"Nonsense, you'll do wonderfully, my dear."

"Not that I hate to disagree," but she did, she really did, "but I'm an awful aim. A _horrible _aim, even. I was always picked last for athletic sorts of things in school. Actually," her voice turned thoughtful for a moment. "I was never picked at all – I always kept score."

"And no doubt you were marvelous at it," his voice was soft, amused.

"Tally marks are one thing – _this _is quite different," and yes, she could hear the hitch in her voice.

"In some ways," Moriarty chided as he came round from behind her. "In others, not so much."

Molly wanted to contest the point with him, she really, really did. But past halfhearted protests, one did not get far from outright arguing with one such as him. She had seen the results of others doing so, and she personally liked everything on her form to stay intact, thank-you-very-much – no matter what kind of odd sort of standing stood between them.

But, that didn't mean she could protest – just a very little, as he offered her the small revolver.

She looked at the weapon like she would a serpent, biting her lip nervously without moving to take what was offered to her. Her father liked to hunt. She remembered holding his riffle in his study (all ten years old and feeling decidedly guilty as the various heads on the wall seemed to stare at her, judging her with dead eyes), very small and tiny as her father showed her how the shotgun worked. The weapon had been taller than her, the barrel very cold, and very smooth. Teaching her, her father had been warm in contrast, amused at her wide eyed silence as he held his hands over her own, his mimed _boom _loud on the still air. So very loud.

At the moment, she couldn't tell if Jim was amused or not – his eyes were carefully blank, a poker mask if ever there was one, and his face was relaxed, neither encouraging or judging, merely waiting. Which, she reflected, was worse than either or – he was waiting for her to impress him, to prove his foresight and understanding right once more.

She breathed in as her fingers tightened over the hilt. The grooves of the hand grip were smooth enough to comfort her, and rough enough to hold steady to her skin even as her palms sweated. The nickle finish was a dull shine in the bright light of the practice range, the glimmer of it drawing her eye as she turned the weapon over in her hand.

"My dear, even when not intending to shoot, it is best to keep from aiming at anything you would regret seeing struck."

On cue, her cheeks flushed when she realized that the barrel had been twisted rather obviously at him. She altered her hold, pointing at the ground and far away enough from her feet so as to avoid becoming apart of a rather nasty and embarrassing statistic.

"Much better," and she was not imagining the amusement in his voice this time. The amusement turned to an easy sort of command as he showed her how to load the weapon – rounds instead of a clip, the bullets heavy and pointed in her hands as he explained different types of ammunition, and the most common loading accidents. She loaded and unloaded the revolver a few times before turning the unloaded weapon down towards the practice target.

Even unloaded, she flinched when the hammer struck and the weapon coughed up empty. Behind her, unseen to her eyes, but holding the world with his words, Moriarty corrected her stance – her breathing, the set of her shoulders and the curve of her fingers. She fought the urge to twitch at times – wishing that she had had coffee that morning in order to calm her nerves. (Steady hands meant a body not abused by her caffeine intake – his words, not hers – and she had forgone her normal fix.)

For the most part, his words were familiar to her - she had read the instruction manual first – it seemed to be the right thing to do at the time, and all. She knew the names of the parts, and how each piece worked for the whole to function. She was very good at dissecting, after all; at putting her twos and twos together. The black and white words printed neatly on paper did her almost as much good as the words spoken softly from her, prompting her mind to absorb and flourish under his instruction.

She was wearing glasses to protect her, but her ears were uncovered – best to get used to loud noises distracting her concentration as soon as possible, he had said. The noise was almost surprising the first time she shot with a live bullet.

His instructions were heavy in her ears, becoming both memory and reflex to her body now. Keep her finger outside the trigger guard. Brace her feet shoulder width apart and steady herself. Take a breath, exhale half a breath, then fire – pressing down slowly so that she was almost surprised when the weapon went off. Slowly but surely, these things became second nature to her.

She was able to fire six rounds before having to reload, and her fingers become quicker and more efficient as the hours wore on. The firing paper was pocked with marks – a few hit close to home, but not many. Instead of noticing her one that hit the heart (blind, and dumb luck) she set her jaw as she noticed all those which landed wide and sporadic.

Eventually, as her accuracy grew, she tried her best to be creative with her marks – knowing where important arteries were, and how best to place a wound where it would incapacitate the body. She had always been a cog on the assembly line, but she had always dealt with the shattered project – she had never shattered one herself. But she now had a bounteous repertoire of memories to choose from as she took her aim.

"Not bad," was the bland praise offered to her when the sheet was returned to her from the other end of the range. She looked up to read a deeper opinion in his eyes, but found little to aide her.

So, she looked away from him and reached out to touch the paper as if it were flesh, closing her eyes and feeling a sweeping of feeling rise in her gut as she imagined the bullets striking true and living matter – forcing herself to remember the eyes and smile and memories of a body instead of the mere build of it. As long as she kept hold on that distinction between living and dead, she could hold herself poised – and not crumble under the strange exudes that her mind was experiencing.

"Now, is that something you could do with a live target?" his voice was careful, not setting a trap so much as he was interested as to what she would do with the bait before her.

"Of course," her answer came fast and assuring. Her mouth set at the edge of them, belaying their believability.

His eyes flickered at her half truth, and the smile he gave her was something unsettling and not at all comforting. "Conscience does make cowards out of us all," he addressed her unspoken thoughts, his voice mocking - the line of steel to them holding an easy sort of scorn that made her trickling strings of morality almost infantile in comparison.

She frowned as she released the sheet to pick up the revolver again. The gun felt easier in her hand, but that was merely her body adjusting to instinct and reflex. The mind, it seemed, was slow to follow – but follow it could.

"Have you . . ." she let herself whisper a question that had weighed heavily on her mind. "Have you ever . . ." she couldn't find the words, they were thick and hidden on her tongue even as her mind swam with the essence of them.

And as always, her mind was an open tome before him. "Yes," he answered in a soft voice, the single syllable a caress as much as it was a confession.

"Oh," she fiddled with the metal plating of the gun in her hand, her fingers itching to be used. "I didn't think . . ." that he had it in him. Plotting deaths and participating them were two different things entirely – it was easy to puncture the sheet at the end of the firing range, but where there was a target living and breathing, it took away the absent reality of implication and understanding.

"I don't, not normally," he agreed with her. "I am not one to get my hands dirty, but time and unforeseen occurrence do befall us all."

She snorted softly at that, knowing it to be true. "How many, then?"

"With a paltry weapon like you hold there?" he questioned, something almost disdaining in his voice. "Only five souls."

It was not that high a number. Not for who he was.

But without that weapon . . . it was that count which was unsettling to her. An unreality that was fairly surreal to her mind – she had allied herself to him, taken his secrets as her own, and while time had numbed the edges of her understanding in order to let her stand with her head held high, there was still a part of her that whispered the realities of just what she was embarking on.

"You have the potential to be good, really good," he said, his eyes once again watching her in that careful sort of way, completely black even in the bright florescent light before them. "You have steady hands, and a good eye."

She knew both. She could have easily been a surgeon – and a top one at that, but instead she had turned to operating on the dead rather than preserving the living. An eye for detail and nuance was needed in either field, and it was something in her humble life that she excelled at.

"You could be exceptional," he confided, his voice intimate in the silence, coiling with the metallic scent of discharged shots in the air. He was very close to her, a hand raised slightly to let his fingers dance across her own – touching both skin and metal in one caress.

He was not merely speaking about her aim, she knew.

"And besides, this is just a precaution," he took a step back from her, letting her have her space. "I don't foresee you having to use what you are learning, at least – not in a tangible way, but it will not serve you well to set you into this world without giving you the tools to adorn yourself with."

To some extent, he let her build her confidences with a vague sense of what-it, and she was grateful for that. When she reached out for a new round, he stepped back even further, but still she could hear the almost melodic cadence of his voice – hypnotic as _promise_ and _power _to her ears.

"And if it does come down to this, my dear, you will be surprised at how easy it is to pull the trigger in the end. Your hands will not shake – already your eyes say that much."

Molly didn't answer him – either to agree or disagree – she merely pulled the trigger again, and watched as the target beyond them burned black.


	3. in which certain things are crossed out

**iii. in which certain things are crossed out**

It was a ridiculously warm excuse for a Monday morning.

The lower wings of the hospital were clammy and stale while whatever hitch hampering the cooling system was being worked on right over her head. She could hear the workers from where she was working - checking on her newest additions, all the while cursing the warm air that didn't let her keep the bodies out for long all. Their drilling and hammering was pulling at her already frayed nerves, and her normal morning's tradition of a caffeine fix was coming at great cost to herself as she swallowed the hot beverage with mulish gulps.

Molly finished with her first body quickly enough – the bloodtests had came back positive for blood poisoning, and it didn't take much further digging to decipher what drug of choice the girl had pumped herself full of before her rather nasty accident. She filled out the forms with a mechanical script before moving to type them up as well, her moves methodical and reflexive as she went about her work without truly registering her movements.

Her lethargy was broken by the next body she brought out.

There was something familiar about the man she unzipped from the freezer. Something very familiar . . . Frowning, she checked the paperwork – but she found no quarter there, for all of it was inconclusive. The body had had no ID when found, and the fingerprints held no match in any of their own, or INTERPOL's databases. While a rarity, such a thing was possible – all for the want of a high price, and an excellently placed contact; but neither were out of reach for some. The detectives at Scotland Yard were waiting to see if she could put a name to the face – and an answer to their mystery.

The cause of death was easy at least – just from glancing she could see the exit wounds on the man's chest; bullet wounds, struck in a perfect triangle that spoke of a professional aim. This was not a murder so much as an execution – shot in the back, and at very close range. No doubt the victim had been talking to his killer before his end, trying to reason and plead . . .

Molly shook her thoughts away as she ran a tender finger over the circumference of the wound, her finger teasing the edge of where once healthy flesh met that bloody and torn asunder. Her mind filled in the details for her – an imaginary family for her imaginary man, a suit and tie job that chained him to a desk and put him in the way of those high and corrupt. His voice would have still been kind, and level - his beautiful blue eyes his greatest weapon as he let words spin his way out of every hole, and into quite a few listening ears.

Those eyes . . . she reflected as she slowly peeled an eyelid away (a silly habit to see her victims real and living once more). She knew those eyes . . .

Suddenly, a memory came back to her – a ring of gentleman mired in dark things. A man in a pinstriped suit asking for her name even as he kissed the back of her hand as easily as if he didn't have bloodied palms of his own. A kingpin from Dublin whom Moriarty had watched long and slow as he had left, something almost cautioning about his gaze . . .

Molly felt bile rise in her throat as she hurriedly stepped back from the table and the man upon it.

He was . . . he was . . .

Not as alive as he was the last time she had seen him.

If he was one of the criminal underground she had met – and one of the higher ups, at that, then it was no wonder that the Yard couldn't put a name to him. This man existed nowhere except where he willed himself to be, and his belief in his own infallibility had obviously led to his own undoing.

One did not cross James Moriarty, and live . . .

That was something she knew all to well.

In the pocket of her lab coat, she felt her mobile buzz. Reflexively she reached down for the phone, and flipped it open to see a text waiting for her.

_How is Johnny?  
>~JM<em>

She narrowed her eyes at the text, her stomach jumping again at the implications of what she was seeing . . . what she knew of.

Slowly, she typed her reply.

_Not as well as the last time I saw him, I'm afraid.  
>~MH<em>

She bit her lip, and waited.

And then.

_Perhaps the folder on your desk will aide with his recovery.  
>~JM<em>

And no more.

Frowning, Molly pushed a sweaty strand of hair behind her ear as she turned away from the crimelord to look over at her desk – and the manilla folder sitting carefully unassuming under a packet of candy. Pushing the M&Ms to the side for the moment, she cast her eyes around the few shadows that the florescent lights left to thrive before carefully sliding her thumb under the lip of the envelope to see its contents.

Hesitantly, she reached inside and pulled out a small dragon's horde of forger's treasures. Bloodwork, identification papers, dental records and a full slew of other things needed to create a new identity.

Or cover an old one anew.

Understanding settled in her deep and quick. Her fingers tightened on the information in her hand, bloodless and still as she saw the impasse posed before her. For the most part there had been something that was a fine line (black and white combined) about what she played with, so far. _This_, this right here, held no black or white. This was the law, and this was her putting human thoughts and secrets above what was higher than all.

She looked down at the corpse again, seeing the test before her like red lasers protecting a priceless artifact in a museum at night. She could take the diamond before her and let the trinket shine on her, or she could walk pass the treasure none the wiser for what she was missing.

But the message was clear – she was no longer a silent spectator, she was an observer who could touch the edges of the pawns on the chessboard. Now, all that remained to see was whether or not those pieces were her brethren, or hers to manipulate as well . . .

Taking a deep breath, she moved to the computer and started to create a file, using the information in the folder to aide her. As she created an identity for the dead man behind her, a part of her fell into the routine – forgetting the heat and the choking protests of conscience within her as she struck her fingers neatly against the keys.

It wasn't until she was hitting _enter_for the last time that she was joined by a visitor.

Two visitors.

"I'm looking for a John Doe. Tall, fair haired, nice eyes – have you seen him?"

Only one visitor ever swept into her morgue as if he owned it. Her lips curled in annoyance at Sherlock Holme's haughty assuming of her aide – just as he knew that the dead she harbored would bow before him, and spill their secrets eagerly into his ears. Too many times before had that been proved true.

"Papers first?" she held a hand out, not looking up.

Ever since that evening at _La Chapelle_, Sherlock had been almost careful around her – as if he was piecing her together, completing a picture in his mind. A part of her enjoyed the new game brewing between them as much as the one she played with Jim – she was moving pieces across a board much higher than her own sphere, and she reveled in it.

Lestrade's clearance hit her hand a moment later, and she didn't bother to wonder if it was legitimate or forged. She just got to her feet (strangely aware that the heat and humidity had her sloppy ponytail plastered against her neck, and not caring of it) and led the Detective over to the body she had recovered lest the heat damaged it.

"Here you are," she said almost cheerfully, moving around to the other side of the table so that Sherlock could look the body over, John an ever present shadow at his side.

"Do you have any news as to his identity?" Sherlock asked softly, looking down on the corpse (and a part of her shivered at how much he resembled Jim in that moment – eyes composed of a dark and undefinable matter, and and singlemindedly intense as he locked gazes with the dead man) as if he could read dying secrets from decaying flesh and bone, and decipher them whole.

She bit the inside of her lip, her hand tracing pointless patterns on the dead man's wrist – whether to sooth him, or herself, she wasn't quite certain.

"Hopkins," she whispered the name from the file Jim had left her. "Sully Hopkins."

Sherlock blinked at that. And for a moment she tensed, expecting . . .

"Well, that was delightfully anticlimactic," he sneered, face creased in distaste.

"Who were you expecting?" she asked curiously.

A few steps away from them, John rolled his eyes. "You wouldn't believe it if we told you."

Sherlock didn't bother looking at the corpse again – or her for that matter, he simply turned on his heel and left, the abruptness of his movements causing his coat to billow behind him in a rather dramatic fashion that would have at one time placed a smile on her face to last the whole day though.

But now . . . she simply inclined her head at John, and turned to her work once more.


End file.
